Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: January 8th

THE SANCTITY OF LOVE

That ye ...may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what ts the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. - Ephesians 3:18-19

Before we can love an unseen person and believe in his love, we must know about him by the ordinary means by which we learn about all persons outside the circle of our sight. So, before the love which is thus the parent of deep, true knowledge, there must be the knowledge by study and credence of the record concerning Christ, which supplies the facts on which alone love can be cherished. The understanding has its part to play in leading the heart to love, and then the heart becomes the true teacher. He that loveth, knoweth God, for God is love. He that, because Christ dwells in his heart, is rooted and grounded in love, will be strengthened to know the love in which he is rooted. The Christ within us will know the love of Christ. We must first "taste," and then we shall "see" that the Lord is good, as the Psalmist puts it with deep truth. First the appropriation and feeding upon God, then the clear perception by the mind of the sweetness in the taste. First the enjoyment, then the reflection of the enjoyment. First the love, and then the self-consciousness of the love of Christ possesses and the love to Christ is experienced, which is knowledge. There is another condition laid down in these words, "That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints." That is to say, our knowledge of the love of Jesus Christ depends largely on our sanctity. If we are pure, we shall know. If we were wholly devoted to Him, we should wholly know His love to us; and in the measure in which we are pure and holy, we shall know it. That heart of ours is like some reflecting telescope; the least breath of earth upon the mirror will cause all the starry sublimities that it should shadow forth to fade and become dim. The slightest moisture in the atmosphere, though it be quite imperceptible where we stand, will yet be dense enough to shut our the fair, shining, snowy summits that girdle the horizon there, and to leave nothing visible but the lowliness and commonplaceness of the prosaic plain.

If you want to know the love of Christ, that love must purify your souls. But then you must keep your souls pure, assured of this, that only the single eye is full of light, and that they who are not "saints" grope in the dark even at mid-day, and whilst drenched by the sunshine of His love, are unconscious of it altogether. And so we get that miserable and mysterious tragedy that men and women walk through life, as many of you are doing, in the very blaze and focus of Christ’s love, and never behold it, nor know anything about it.